Each year, trillions of fish suffer slow, painful deaths because of underwater factory farming. Not only do fish in factory farms suffer from parasites, disease, and other harms, but the carnivorous fish typically kept in aquaculture must also be fed more fish. As a result, billions more fish are brutally caught and killed just to be turned into fishmeal for farmed species like salmon and sea bass.

Now, aquaculture entrepreneurs are eyeing a new species to mass produce: octopus.

Octopuses have not been farmed previously because their life cycles are so fragile and complex that researchers have not been able to consistently raise them in captivity. Now, however, some researchers think they will soon be able to crack the code, giving entrepreneurs the green light to pursue a business venture that would spell disaster for both octopuses and ocean ecosystems. As natural explorers, octopuses are unfit for the monotony of crowded, barren cages in factory farms. In addition, their carnivorous diets would require large numbers of fish to be caught and fed to them, further depleting our ocean’s fish stocks and causing more fish to suffer painful deaths through suffocation, crushing, etc. Congress must take action to protect octopuses before it’s too late.